Wednesday, October 3, 2012

Pentecost 19b - Hebrews 1:1-4; 2:5-12

If “in these last days” Jesus is the reflection of God’s
glory and the very imprint of God’s very being” then God (in Jesus) was, for a little
while, lower than the angels as well. But that I mean Jesus cannot taste death
for everyone while the one Father who sanctifies remains separate. Even if we
reduce the relationship of the inner workings of the mystery of the Trinity to something
a little lower, like human parent and child, God experiences the death Jesus
drinks. More to the point, it is not just any death that Jesus tastes. He does
not die in his sleep. The cancer doesn’t get him. He doesn’t drop dead of a
heart attack. It isn’t an accident. Crowned with thorns, stripped naked and
nailed to wood Jesus’ death is as creative as humans can get when it comes to inflicting
shame and pain on one another. And given that God, for whom and through whom
all things exist, knew our nature from the beginning… (in subjecting all things
to them God left nothing outside their control) it was not only fitting but really the only
option that salvation for savages such as ourselves should come through suffering.
And by that I mean Jesus descends into our corruption and rises above our much
lower status so that we might ascend above and beyond our beginnings to become
like the pioneer of our salvation.